It's been a little quiet around here lately. What originally started as a one month break in November 2011 has turned into a three month hiatus after illness and the Christmas period took their toll on my time. After than I was just plain lazy getting things rolling again ;) On the bright side I did get a bunch of painting and gaming in!
Well never fear, BattleScribe is alive and well and I'm back on the case! I've tried to reply to any emails, forum posts, UserVoice suggestions etc. that I neglected over the last couple of months. If I've missed yours, or you feel I haven't answered sufficiently, please do drop me a line via Twitter (@BattleScribe), Google+ or email (jon [dot] taylor [at] battlescribe [dot] net). You could also bump your forum thread - I should see your post on my feed.
1.12.04b Pre Release
I've spent the last couple of weeks getting back into the swing of things with some minor updates, mostly around helping new users get started. This is primarily a "getting started" dialog which helps you to find and set up repositories. This gets shown if the user has no existing data repositories. BattleScribe will now also automatically check your repositories for new and updated data files when it starts up.
There are also a few other bits and pieces in there (including possibly breaking changes to the way files are loaded and saved). The full list of changes is on the forum thread where you can download a pre-release version to play with if you're feeling brave. If you do, please let me know on the thread if you find any problems so I can get them fixed up before the final release sometime in the next week.
What's Next?
After the 1.12.04b release, I'll be going back to the Android app to do a major overhaul. As you may well be aware, this version is functional, but looks pretty... nasty. It really needs large improvements to the style of the visuals/user interface - I'll probably take a cue from the way Google's own apps look (such as Reader and Google+), with a black-on-white colour scheme.
On top of that, it really needs it's internals re-working too. I learned a lot about how Android apps are supposed to work while I was writing it (it was my first Android app), and this knowledge needs applying.
So the Android app is pretty much going to get re-written from the ground up.
After That...
There are a couple of major UserVoice suggestions around allowing entries, rules and profiles to be shared within a catalogue file. This is something that's been needed for a while and should make people's lives much easier when editing or creating catalogues. On top of that, it should make BattleScribe more flexible than ever and open up new ways of building catalogue files.
So, there's the plans for upcoming BattleScribe development and planned new features. Happy (late) new year to everyone and may all your dice roll sixes!
